Media Release Detail

Labor slow to act to ease Eltham's congestion

Wednesday, May 02, 2018

It is
unacceptable that it has taken the Andrews Government four years to act to
relieve Eltham’s crippling congestion problems.

The Budget
failed to provide any commitment to future duplication works for the
Hurstbridge line.

Only the
Liberal Party has promised to duplicate the line from Greensborough to Eltham,
pledging over $300 million in a project which will also upgrade Montmorency
station and provide more carparking.

With the first
stage of the Hurstbridge duplication project now blowing out by $193 million,
to $588 million, it is clear that the Government is struggling to control its
infrastructure spending.

The Liberals
promised in 2014 the Fitzsimons Lane bus lanes would be opened to cars but it
has taken Labor four years – and $1.5 million – before conceding what has long
been obvious to commuters – that the lanes needed to be opened to traffic.

The Liberals
also committed $1.5 million in 2014 to improve safety at the Leane Drive and
Main Road intersection.Yet this
Government has, until just six months before the election, refused to adopt our
plan to install traffic lights.It has
not yet detailed costings for either of these projects.

The
Government’s Fitzsimons Lane announcement is a vastly inferior plan to the
Liberals promise of grade separations at Main Road/Fitzsimons Lane and at the
Porter St/Fitzsimons Lane intersections as part of a congestion busting plan to
ease congestion at 55 of Melbourne’s intersections.

All Labor’s
plan will do is to apply a bandaid to the congestion problems Eltham residents
face every day.